Moments with Mom: Five Ways to Use Our Together-Time Journal

“Moments with Mom” is a journal—not a checklist. There are sixteen categories of together times, and dozens of related suggestions. Schedule a day, an afternoon, or even an hour to spend with each other, and choose one thing to do. For example: If you fancy some time at a cultural event, you might:

• Spend the day at a festival
• Enjoy an afternoon at a museum
• Go to a poetry reading over coffee

Give yourself time to relax, talk, and enjoy each other’s company without rushing around.

You might give Mom our journal for Mother’s Day or a special birthday, but you don’t have to wait for one of those to come around to use it. Our suggestions for experiences and activities are just right for:

• A snow day, when you’re stuck at home
• A spur-of-the-moment visit
• Mid-way through a week-long visit, when you’re just looking at each other blankly and waiting until it’s time to eat

Let “Moments with Mom” inspire you to spend more quality time.

Some of our ideas are best done as a duo—but many are more fun with more family. Bring the kids. Grab your dad. Make it a small- to medium-sized party and make the ideas your own. For example, under “Let’s Create,” you might challenge your whole family to try “six-word stories.” Give them topics like:

• Our family history
• The day you were born
• Why we deserve each other
• Who would survive longest in the event of a zombie apocalypse
• The future of us

Use any suggestion as a starting point, and riff on it until it’s you, all you.

Sure, you could give the book to Mom, let her add her musings, photos, and memorabilia, and never see it again. Or you could pass “Moments with Mom” back and forth, each adding your thoughts and ephemera until the pages are overflowing with memories. Some things you can add include:

• Photographs
• Receipts
• Ticket stubs
• Pressed leaves and flowers
• Quotes
• Sketches
• Shopping lists
• Flattened pennies
• Calendar pages
• To-do lists
• Tracings
• Recipe cards
• Score sheets
• Diary entries
• Website addresses

Leave surprises on the pages for each other when you pass it back.

“Moments with Mom” is half inspiration, half memory keeper. It’s meant to capture those memorable moments that somehow, we forget to remember: The funny phrases, silly stories, snippets of conversations, fleeting images, small secrets, and quiet looks that fill the spaces in your relationship. Bonus—when you write things down, you might get to see:

• Each other’s unique penmanship
• Unique turns of phrase
• The ways handwriting changes as you get older
• Who captures just the facts, and who puts them into flowery prose
• Your favorite things in your favorite person’s handwriting

We created “Moments with Mom” based on the memories we have with our own mothers—activities and experience we shared or wish we had. We hope it inspires you to try more things together, more often.